As part of the FloodNet Artist and Residence Program, Paolo Cirio was commissioned to create a speculative design artwork.
Project: Flooding NYC Claims
For the FloodNet Arts Grant, Cirio is developing the project Flooding NYC Claims to simulate legal claims that can financially compensate New Yorkers based on flooding data being computed with data about the greenhouse gas emissions figures produced by fossil fuel firms. This project integrates “attribution science”, climate change litigations, and global climate treaties. Central to Cirio’s concept is the historical study “Carbon Majors Database” by the Climate Accountability Institute, the first that established specific responsibilities for each international fossil fuel firm, and deduced that the 100 major oil, gas, and coal producers have generated over 70% of greenhouse gas emissions
Artist Bio
Website: Paulo Cirio
Paolo Cirio engages with social, economic, and cultural issues of contemporary society. He shows his research and intervention-based works through installations, artifacts, photography, videos, and public art both offline and online. Originally from Italy, Cirio lived in NYC for over ten years. In 2010, he created the Drowning-NYC.net project to raise awareness about how the rising sea level impacts residents of Lower Manhattan, engaging high-school kids and adults to the future gentrification brought by urban climate adaptation and the complex causes of Global Warming. In 2021, Cirio launched a utopian Climate Tribunal to put on trial major fossil fuel firms using evidence consisting of data, graphs, and documents. Later, Cirio launched the Climate Class Action, a campaign for taking legal class action against fossil fuel companies.